Cowboy Roped In: Contemporary Western Romance (Wild Creek Cowboys Book 2)

by Mary Leo

“But she still held down that job. Didn’t she work at Harmony’s Diner back then? Before Chuck Starr bought it and changed the name?”

  “Can we not talk about this, please?”

  She laid back on the blanket and Chase laid down next to her, resting on his side, his head resting on his hand.

  “Just one more question.” He wasn’t ready to give up on her parents just yet. He wanted her to see that they weren’t always drunks, that something must have happened to put them on that path. Unfortunately, he didn’t know what that was, but he hoped he could instill curiosity in her to find out.

  She let out a frustrated sigh. “Sure.”

  “Are you going to have a wake for Clark? I, for one, would really appreciate it if you did.”

  She stared at him for a moment. “You have the best eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen eyes like yours before. When the sun hits them, the gold flecks really stand out. They’re actually quite beautiful.”

  He ran a finger over her lovely full lips. “I’d like to kiss you. Would that be okay in front of Jayden?”

  She shook her head. “We can’t. I don’t want Jayden to think we have anything more than a friendship.”

  He hesitated, then sat up again. “About that wake.”

  She sat up as well. “Fine. I’ll have a memorial service. I’ll call the funeral home later today and make arrangements for his private burial next to my mom. No wake. No funeral. But I’ll have a memorial luncheon sometime in the next week or so.”

  “Thanks. I’d like that and despite Clark’s ornery ways, I think he would too.”

  “He probably would. Not that he deserves anything from me, but I’ll do it for you and for Jayden. After all, Clark was his grandfather, even though they never met.”

  “That’s too bad. Might have done Clark some good to meet his grandson.”

  “I couldn’t justify bringing him to the hospital when Clark was so sick and nasty. No telling what might have happened. Even now, I don’t think I’ll bring him to the memorial. He won’t understand and it might frighten him.”

  “Have a memorial service at O’Malley’s Funeral Home. Jayden can miss that part. Then lunch at a restaurant. Oak View Inn has the biggest room. Jayden can come to that part. It’s just lunch. I’d like to arrange the luncheon. It’s the least I can do for Clark. Jayden and anybody else can attend the luncheon. It would be my honor. Just give me a date, and I’m on it.”

  He could tell she was hesitant to take his offer. “I don’t . . .”

  “Look at it this way: it’s one less thing you have to worry about. You have enough going on with the house, the land, outstanding bills, your son and I’m sure a myriad of other things, so let me do this one thing for you and Clark. It means a lot to me. Besides, you didn’t want a service for him anyway. So my taking this on plays into your plans.”

  “When you put it like that . . .”

  “Done! All you have to do is provide a date and we’re set. Thanks for letting me do this.”

  He stood, thinking that if they lingered any longer she might change her mind, which he didn’t want her to do.

  “We should get going,” he said, offering his hand to help her up. She took it and he felt a warmth radiate through her fingers. He could tell by her touch that this friendship thing she was using wasn’t real. She had feelings for him, but for some reason she was trying her best to keep them at bay. For now, he’d go along with it.

  “I have a lot to do, but thank you for this. It was a nice break.”

  Then, for some inexplicable reason, she reached up and kissed him, which stunned him and caused Jayden to giggle, which caused both Chase and RuthieAnn to pounce on him with a million tickles and a bunch of hugs.

  No doubt about it, Chase Cooper was falling for this woman right along with her very special son.

  “DAD PASSED AWAY last night,” RuthieAnn told her brother once she’d finally gotten him on the phone. She’d called several times, but he never picked up, which was custom for him. She finally texted that it was an emergency, and the next time she called, he picked up on the first ring.

  Kevin, like most teens, preferred text over conversation, but RuthieAnn couldn’t accept that fact and continued to call.

  Jayden was asleep in the other room while she had made herself comfortable on the sofa in the living room. She hadn’t bothered to pull the actual bed out of the sofa. It just seemed like too much trouble, so instead, she simply made up the sofa with extra blankets and pillows from the bed. She’d been working on getting Jayden to sleep through the night in his own room, and she didn’t want to break what little ground she’d made by sleeping with him during their stay in Wild Creek.

  “I know,” he said. “I called the hospital late last night to see how he was doing. His nurse told me. Were you with him?”

  It was nice to hear her brother’s voice. It had been awhile.

  “No. Chase was. I’d just stepped out with Pearl.”

  “Well, at least somebody was there with the old bastard. Now what?”

  It seemed that Kevin had even less feelings for their dad than she did. “I’ve decided to have a memorial service for him, but that’s it. I’m going to have him buried next to Mom instead of cremating him and dumping his ashes somewhere. The funeral home will take care of all of that for us. Then we’ll have the memorial service. Chase is taking care of most of the memorial, and the luncheon afterwards. He really wants to do it, so who am I to stop him?”

  RuthieAnn had spent most of the day on the phone making the arrangements with O’Malley’s Funeral Home for the private burial. When it came to picking out a coffin, she gave Daniel O’Malley a minimal price range and left it up to them. They seemed happy to do everything for her, as if Clark was someone important . . . which he most certainly was not.

  “Yeah. Chase is like that. Can talk a dead horse into breathing again. I suppose I should come out, then.”

  “Not if you don’t have the time.”

  RuthieAnn really wanted to see Kevin. It had been far too long, but she wouldn’t dare try to sway him. Their dad didn’t deserve any of this fuss. Still, for her own selfish reasons, she would love to spend some time with her little brother.

  “You shouldn’t have to go through all of this on your own. Besides, I’d like to see you. It’s been, what? Five years? And I’d like to finally meet Jayden. He should know who his uncle is.”

  A real happiness surged through her. “I’d like that.”

  “When will you have this thing?”

  She hadn’t given it much thought until that very moment. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. How about the following Saturday? Will that work for you?”

  RuthieAnn was thinking that she’d like to get some work done on the house, and settle up some things with their dad’s lawyer before her brother came out. Kevin didn’t need any added stress besides his schoolwork. Maybe she hadn’t done much for him in the past, but she could at least remove the burden of their dad’s estate from his shoulders.

  “Sure, I can make it work.”

  She hesitated for a moment, stretching out her legs as she lounged on the sofa, pillows and blankets surrounding her with warmth. She’d taken her dad’s things from the hospital and had dropped his clothes and empty wallet in a Dumpster in the parking lot, but not before she had saved the picture, along with the mysterious key still dangling from the end of the silver chain.

  The key and the picture now sat on the wooden coffee table next to her, dragging up memories from her past. She could only imagine what the key opened, but apparently she’d find out as soon as she made an appointment with Avery Templeton. She thought that maybe she should ask Kevin if he wanted to talk to the lawyer before making that decision for him.

  “I’m going to make an appointment to see Dad’s lawyer this week. Do you want me to hold off until you’re here so we can do it together?”

  “Dad had a lawyer?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Nah. You go ahead without me
. I really don’t care about any of it. Whatever Dad had or didn’t have makes no difference to me.”

  “Dad left a key to something and only his lawyer knows what it’s for. I’ll let you know if it’s to anything important. By the time you get here, I should know all the gory details of his life.”

  “Probably a key to his private stash of booze or his still. Or Dad was really a filthy rich entrepreneur and kept all his money in some warehouse somewhere. We could be millionaires!”

  “Or not.”

  Kevin snickered, and now that she had him in a good mood, she thought she’d ask him a couple of questions that had been weighing on her ever since Pearl told her about Kevin’s finding Chase. “Kevin, you never told me what happened that morning . . . the morning you found Chase on the side of the road. What happened, exactly? How did you find him? Wasn’t he hidden from view?”

  Lucky had pushed his bike onto the deep shoulder, and had slid Chase back off the road. He’d been unconscious at the time, but woke up writhing in pain once the rain began to really come down. She’d tried to help Chase, but Lucky wouldn’t allow it. Still, she should’ve fought harder.

  “What do you mean by hidden from view?” Kevin asked. “That’s a strange question.”

  She couldn’t seem to bring herself to tell her brother what she’d witnessed that morning. That she hadn’t really tried to stop Lucky. Oh sure, she’d argued with him, and she’d knelt down to talk to Chase, but she’d been too scared to call the sheriff.

  “I mean I’d heard he was really far off the road.”

  “Yeah, really far. Like somebody moved him there. I guess that’s what was written up at the time. I tell ya, I never would’ve spotted him if it hadn’t been for that pink thing he was lying on.”

  RuthieAnn’s stomach clenched as disturbing memories shot through her. “What pink thing?” she asked in a whisper, knowing exactly what he was referring to. Somehow, over the years, she’d managed to block out a lot of the disturbing events of that morning. Most of what happened, beginning with the beating she’d taken from Lucky. That entire morning had been too agonizing to dwell on, so she had purposely forgotten most of it.

  Until now.

  “Some kind of rag or bag or something. I don’t know what it was or where it came from. All I remember is that Jimmy Sanchez, Danny Quinn and I were riding on the other side of the road, heading for school like we did every morning, when something bright pink caught my eye. I was going to fly right past it, but I thought of Mom. She fell, hit her head and passed out on the side of the road near Around The Bend. If someone had spotted her lying there, they might have saved her life. Anyway, because of Mom, I decided to check it out. I thought maybe some girl had fallen off her bike on the way to school. I pedaled across the road and spotted Chase. Danny and Jimmy had kept going, but then turned around when they realized I wasn’t with them anymore. I called them over. Chase was out cold. It didn’t look good. He was pretty banged up and there was a lot of blood on his clothes and on the road. His leg pointed in the wrong direction. It made me really scared and sick to my stomach just looking at him.”

  RuthieAnn pulled the blankets up as a deep chill grabbed her, causing her insides to shake as if some kind of electrical shock was streaming through her.

  “Jimmy’s mom’s a nurse and she’d taught him how to check for a pulse, so he did. When Jimmy found one, I knew we had to call an ambulance. But I didn’t have a phone and neither did Danny, and Jimmy’s phone didn’t have a signal, so I booked it back home, woke up Dad and told him what was going on. I never saw him go into full-on adult mode before. He really stepped up that morning. He called the ambulance, then drove over to the scene.

  “By the time we got back, Chase was awake but really out of it. Jimmy and Danny tried to keep the rain off his face by standing over him. Good thing Dad had the smarts to bring an umbrella with him. As soon as he got there, he opened that thing and held it over Chase as best he could. He also brought a towel from the house and pressed it into Chase’s shoulder. The man was bleeding real bad.

  “That’s when Dad told us to go on to school. He said he’d wait for the ambulance. I didn’t want to leave, but he insisted, so we left. That night he didn’t come home until really late, but he was stone sober. When I asked him about Chase, he said that I’d saved his life, but it wasn’t me. I never would’ve spotted him if it wasn’t for that pink thing under his head. It was Dad who did all the work. He was a real hero that day. I had to give him credit for that much. Always did. And I suppose because of that day, the old bastard deserves a decent funeral.

  “I’ll be there Friday night. We can go over to the funeral home and the cemetery, together.”

  “Thanks,” RuthieAnn forced out. She could hardly control her emotions. “That’ll be nice.”

  “So, that’s what happened, in case you were wondering.”

  “Whatever happened to that pink rag?”

  “Don’t know. Never saw it again. Probably got pushed into the brush. Good thing it was there though, or man who knows what could have happened.”

  “Yeah, who knows.”

  RuthieAnn said goodbye soon after that, placed her phone on the coffee table and thought about that bright pink rag under Chase’s head . . . the pink jacket she’d been wearing. The jacket she’d carefully slipped under his head right before she got into the car with Lucky after he dragged her inside by her hair and threatened to do the same to her as he’d done to Chase if she tried to tell anyone about what happened.

  It had been her favorite jacket, the jacket that had belonged to her mom . . . the pink jacket her mom had forgotten at the bar the night she walked out, slipped and slowly died while lying out on the side of the road.

  The pink jacket that Sweet Sally had returned to Clark right after her mom’s funeral, and Clark had tossed into the trash.

  The pink jacket that RuthieAnn had secretly retrieved, and worn whenever she felt lonely for her mom. She’d slipped it on that morning when she ran out of the house, trying to get away from Lucky, away from her dad, away from Wild Creek. She hadn’t even remembered to put on her shoes, but she remembered that jacket . . . the only thing she had to give to Chase after he stopped to offer her a ride, and Lucky rammed the back of his bike.

  Nine

  For the next few days, RuthieAnn spent most of her time in her room, alone, trying to come to terms with everything Kevin had told her. The rest of her time was spent tackling her dad’s house. She did that alone as well, but wasn’t making much progress. She was going to have to hire a crew to help, but that would have to wait until after the funeral.

  Chase had called her a few times, apparently getting her number from his mom, asking her out for dinner or coffee or just for a visit, but each time RuthieAnn had refused. She simply didn’t want to see anyone, and especially not Chase. The guilt she felt overwhelmed her.

  Pearl was right, she had to tell Chase the truth, needed to tell Chase the truth, but she simply didn’t have the nerve to face him. Not after her brother had filled in the aftermath of the accident.

  Pearl had been a saint during this time by stopping by each morning to pick up Jayden. She even took him out to the Cooper ranch a couple of times for his riding lessons, and afterwards Jayden would burst into her room full of smiles and snippets of conversation about how much he was loving riding a new bigger horse named Annabelle Lee. For the very first time in Jayden’s life, he actually looked forward to something, to his rides on Annabelle Lee.

  In the meantime, Clark had been buried without anyone in town knowing about it. The director of the funeral home had taken care of everything, which RuthieAnn would be forever grateful. He had been buried right next to her mom, and the tombstone would soon reflect that.

  RuthieAnn intended to visit the site at some point before she left Wild Creek, but that date was still up in the air. For now, it was enough that she had decided on having a memorial, that fortunately, she didn’t have to think much about. Chase was han
dling all of that—although, she kept tabs on everything he was planning for the service itself. She didn’t want it to be too elaborate. Something simple would suffice, she was sure. That was if anyone even showed up—which was doubtful. The man was a horror and everyone knew it.

  Once RuthieAnn took care of any loose ends, she steeled her nerves and paid a visit to his lawyer. Avery’s office was right in town on Main Street, which made it convenient, but also made RuthieAnn vulnerable to townsfolk expressing their condolences. She really wasn’t up for seeing anyone she knew, but for some reason, walking a mere block to the office seemed like some sort of condolences gauntlet she had to get through.

  “So sorry to hear about your dad’s passing,” Mr. Lando said once he stopped in front of RuthieAnn. His wife, Joyce, stood at his side, and reached out to give RuthieAnn a hug.

  “It’s so nice to see you again, sweetheart. I heard you were in town and that you brought your son?” Joyce asked. RuthieAnn could hardly believe the speed with which news traveled through a small town, wondering what Joyce and her husband thought of the fact that Jayden was a special needs child.

  RuthieAnn moved out of her embrace. “Yes, Jayden. He’s five.”

  “Great that Chase is teaching him how to ride. Never too young to get up on a horse,” Mr. Lando said. RuthieAnn couldn’t remember his name, but marveled in the fact that they already knew about Jayden’s riding lessons.

  “You should bring him by, dearie. Love to meet the little fella,” Joyce offered.

  The woman hadn’t changed one bit over the years, with her smooth coffee-colored skin and graying hair that she wore in the same extra short style. RuthieAnn remembered her from when she was growing up. Always had a smile on her face, and she liked to give RuthieAnn and her brother red licorice sticks. RuthieAnn never liked licorice, but she never had the heart to tell Joyce. Instead, as soon as they left the store, RuthieAnn would hand it to her brother, who couldn’t eat them fast enough.

  “I’ll be cleaning out and making repairs to my dad’s house in the next couple of weeks, so I’m sure you’ll see a lot of my boy and me.”